Down to the Wire for a Merry Christmas!

I haven't posted for a while but I have some great excuses plus I have accomplished a lot during this time. One excuse is that CHA {Craft and Hobby Association} trade show is coming up and work has been extremely busy. Another excuse is that I have been doing a lot of freelance which makes me happy. And my third excuse is that I have been busy crafting which left very little time for posting.

So now I can share everything that I've crafted during the month of December.

My favorite decoration this year was so fast, easy and cheap. I used one large and one small vintage, thrifted, drum-style fish bowl filled with recyclable packing peanuts to create a totally California Snowman.

I used thrifted buttons for the eyes and mouth. And because this is a California Snowman, I used a thrifted seashell for the nose.

I already shared my tree here but I just love how cheerful all of the vintage ornaments look.

I pulled out all of my vintage Santas and Holiday Thermoses to decorate a shelf.

Every year my sister and I exchange handmade Christmas ornaments. We use a theme based on the Wedding Anniversary gift guide. This year the Traditional gift suggestion is Cotton and the Modern gift is China. So I used cotton yarn and crocheted a "China teacup". I found the pattern at TurtleDoveCoo.

You can see the Paper/Clock ornament I made for her last year.

As a gift for my coworkers, I made a batch of crocheted snowmen.

I found the pattern at The Dapper Toad. I sat and crocheted these in my truck during my lunch hour and a few were made while sitting in the Target parking lot waiting for the rain to stop. Everyone loved these little guys.

Finally, I made a burlap wreath with vintage Christmas ornaments for my wonderful neighbor.

AND, in between all of this, my son had a track day to test out his race car. Car was great but my dog was a little bored.

No time to be sitting around now! Last minute details to take care of today. I wish everyone a Christmas filled with hope, joy and peace.

Thrifting Before the Storm

It rained hard yesterday. Well, at least it was hard by California standards. Luckily we got some thrifting in before it started although one seller didn't expect any "die hards" to show up... HA!

My favorite find was this super sweet Tom Thumb metal typewriter in its original box. Love the vintage color. Love the sturdy metal construction. Such an exciting, cool find.

We found several other nice vintage toys. This is a working Lite-Brite probably from the early 80s before they had UPC bars. This also had an original box, tons of pegs and newer picture refill packs.

And we found an even more vintage Fisher-Price Toot Toot Train pull toy with a wooden body.

You hear about people who never throw away anything. We found "Bob Pins" {I just realized where the common name of "Bobby Pins" came from} that must have been from the 40s with an illustration of a woman wearing a fashionable "bob" hairstyle. I love the brand name "Scoldy Lox". There is also a package of "bead cord" to restring your "flapper beads".

The last thing we found was another Holiday Thermos {shorter one in the photo below} and a Rex {Rexall Drugs} Thermos. They will be a part of a holiday vintage vignette.

Last year, I bought a white artificial tree at an After Christmas sale. I've never had an artificial tree before. I reasoned that since I believe in thrifty living then I should not keep spending tons of money on live trees every Christmas. And back in the 60s, the artificial metallic trees were probably considered tacky but are now so cool. So I bought the cheapest white tree I could find. It was all of $10 and I didn't have any idea of what it would look like when I set it up this year.

I have to say that as an artificial tree novice, I really like the fact that my artificial tree celebrates the fact that it is a fake tree. It isn't pretending to be anything but a cheap, white, fake tree. If it were a green tree then I would expect it to look like a real tree which would be disappointing.

Having said all of this, we finally put up my cheap white tree and decorated it with my vintage ornaments. I love this tree! It looks like frothy icing sprinkled with shiny candy bits.

And speaking of vintage ornaments. I have two glass ornaments that someone had written a date of 1915 on them. Amazing to think that something made of glass during World War I could have lasted almost 100 years to be on my tree! 

Hope everyone had a fun day of thrifting. I will try to get some of these items posted in my store. 

Thanksgiving Thrifting

Hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving!

I am so thankful for my Dear Handyman. What a trooper! After a Thanksgiving feast he drove me to a house that was scheduled for an estate sale the following morning. We left a box at the door as a placeholder to show that we were first in line {which is the custom at this particular estate sale company's sales}. We woke at 4:45 a.m. the following morning and drove to the sale only to find that someone else had come after us and removed our box. There was nothing we could do to prove our case so we ended up 46th on the signup sheet and the seller took in the first 40 to the sale. By the time we got inside the dealers had bought all of the items we wanted. Oh well, you win some and you lose some.

We did find a very early Monopoly set probably made between 1939 - 1940. The game pieces are made of a composition material, possibly Bakelite. The shapes are crude but they include a horse and rider, train, elephant, car, bathtub, shoe, lamb and iron {the handle of the iron is broken and it seems to be made of a dry composition material}. The wooden hotels have printing that say "Grand Hotel". The old board and pieces were in a newer Monopoly box which also included a set of old dice. These were a fun old find.

More fun finds...

More Pyrex and Vintage Christmas... Oh Happy Heart!

I admit that my heart skips a beat when I see Pyrex or old Christmas ornaments at a garage sale. And my heart sings with joy when the prices are reasonable. Today I have a really happy heart!

I had three favorite finds today. The first was a good stash of vintage Pyrex. The sellers laughed at how happy I was when I saw the Pyrex.

More favorite finds...

Vintage Jewelry Christmas Tree in 3-D

I love a creative challenge so what could be more fun than a Christmas themed Challenge using Dew Drops from The Robin's Nest and a Smoothfoam Cone!

The idea for a 3-D version of a vintage jewelry Christmas tree came from one of those vintage framed jewelry Christmas trees that I found at an estate sale. The jewelry was interesting but the shape of the tree just wasn't pleasing so I decided to disassemble the pieces and make my own modern version of this classic kitschy tree.

I began with a 9" Smoothfoam cone and added a stainless steel scrubber that I loosely pulled over the cone shape. It didn't cover it completely but the idea was to create a filler so that later, the styrofoam would not be seen between the jewelry pieces.

Then came the fun part of sorting and selecting the vintage jewelry. I chose only silver tone, white or pearl jewelry, avoiding colored stones and most gold tone metals {I had to keep the crowns seen below}. I used hot glue and began at the bottom with the largest pieces of jewelry.

If you check out the original framed jewelry tree you will see this dog and the crown as they originally appeared.

You can see how the stainless steel scrubber works as a filler.

Because I didn't use any colored jewelry on this tree, the shiny red Dew Drops from The Robin's Nest add just the right amount of accent color throughout the tree.

I only used the red Dew Drops which really adds such a nice pop of color.

This is linked to:
30 Handmade Days, 504 Main, Cherished Handmade Treasures, Craft-o-Maniac, Gingersnap Crafts, JAQS Studio, Just Us Four, Kammy's Korner, Kathe With an E, Knick of Time Interiors, Ladybug Blessings, Mad in Crafts, Not Just a Housewife, Our Delightful Home, Sew Can Do, Sew Much Ado, Simply Designing, Sugar Bee Crafts, Tatertots and Jello and The DIY Dreamer